Instinct
by UnabashedBird
Summary: That fateful night when Sam is six months old, Mary's long-buried hunting instincts kick in just in time and she doesn't rush into his room while the demon is there. Knowing the demon did something to Sam and determined to find out what, Mary is equally resolved to keep her family safe and give her sons the normal childhood she never had.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Written for the spnaufest on Tumblr.

themegalosaurus did some lovely artwork for it, which you can see if you look the story up on AO3 or go to .com.

Beta'd by the lovely liron-aria.

A note on John's characterization: I think that John in canon was an abusive dickhead after Mary died. However, from what we see of him in "In the Beginning" and "The Song Remains the Same", I also think that, in different circumstances, he would have made different choices and been a better person and a better father. I don't think his canon circumstances absolve him of his behavior in canon, not at all, but I think they help explain it. In this story he gets those different circumstances, and he makes those better choices, which is why he's actually nice and likable and a good dad and husband.

* * *

Mary runs up the stairs, terrified, panicked, _her baby her baby her beautiful baby Sammy there was a man in Sammy's room oh god oh god_, but when she gets to the top of the stairs, long-buried instincts kick in. You don't just run into a room containing an unknown monster.

She slows, forces herself to move more lightly on her feet, to move like the hunter she swore she would never be again. And she remembers. Ten years. It has been almost exactly ten years since that night.

She knows what is in Sammy's nursery.

The only salt is in the kitchen. There is no holy water in the house. There is only her, and she remembers all too well how powerful the demon with the yellow eyes is.

She has been edging along the wall towards the doorway to the nursery, and now she reaches it. Slowly, slowly, she leans around to look, _Sammy forgive me there's nothing else I can do_. The demon stands over Sam's crib. It looks like it's holding its hand out, over Sam. It murmurs something, too soft for her to hear, reaches down and strokes Sam's head _no not my baby get your filthy demon hands off my baby_ but she has to stay still or leave her boys without a mother and she _will not do that_ to them, and then the demon is gone. Vanished.

And Mary is across the room in an instant, running her hands over Sam, even though she doubts the demon did anything so obvious as physical injury. Finding nothing, she scoops him up into her arms, holding him close, and it is all too much, _too much_ and she sinks to the floor with a quiet, strangled sob.

The next day she begins searching the yellow pages as soon as John leaves for the garage. She has to know _she has to know_ what the demon did to her baby, has to know what to do _oh god this was not supposed to be her life; focus Mary you chose this ten years ago now woman up your baby needs you_.

She gets that little buzz of intuition when she reads Missouri Moseley's ad, so she calls the number.

The woman agrees to come over, and Mary learns her instinct was right. But Missouri can tell Mary little that she does not already know or has not already guessed: something evil came to her house, and it left something of itself behind, inside Sam.

Mary makes them tea, hands shaking, mind overflowing with doubt and confusion and _I don't know what to do_.

But Missouri is very good at her job. She talks Mary down, gives her the numbers of her contacts in the psychic and hunting communities, tells Mary to call any time. Mary is so, so grateful, but she doesn't understand why Missouri would go to the trouble.

Missouri looks her in the eye and says, "First, 'cause you're payin' me. Second, 'cause I don't want no evil movin' into this town and causin' trouble, seein' as I live here, too." She has a fierce, determined look that Mary recognizes.

Mary smiles. It's good to have an ally.

That's how it begins. For weeks, Mary spends all the time not devoted to Sam and Dean and running the house and being John's wife while keeping him in the dark _for now, it's just for now, can't risk him not believing me_ doing research. She digs her parents' things out of the basement and starts calling and writing old contacts, as well as the new ones Missouri gave her, asking if anyone has ever heard anything, anything at all, about a demon with yellow eyes, a demon who makes deals but not for souls, a demon who visits babies but doesn't take them or hurt them in obvious ways. She tracks down the others, the ones who made deals at the same time she did. They all have babies about Sam's age. One of them died in a freak fire. She contacts everyone again and asks about fires, too.

She calls and writes universities, pretending to be a student, a reporter, whatever it takes to get experts in mythology and religion and folklore to talk to her. She begins checking out every book of any possible relevance from the library, resisting the urge to skim in her haste, _even the tiniest detail could be the one that matters_.

She reads, she takes care of her kids, does her best to maintain her home and her marriage _she'll tell him she will just not yet she doesn't know how to do it so he'll believe her_, and she waits.

In what seems like no time, nearly a year passes. Sam took his first steps, toddling towards Dean as they played. And now her first baby, who isn't really a baby anymore, is going to school.

She has learned a lot in what feels like so little time. She now knows that the older and more powerful the demon, the harder they are to hurt, and Yellow Eyes is probably old and powerful. She put devil's traps on the undersides of doormats at each outer door and on rugs just inside each bedroom. She spent weeks painstakingly filling long, small tubes with salt, attaching them to every window sill, and painting over them so they blend and John won't notice. He's a little bemused by her sudden burst of interior decorating, but smiles and says the place looks great when she's done. She prays he never looks under the mats and rugs, at least not until she's ready for that conversation.

John teases her about embracing the Marines' attitude of being prepared when she fills empty milk jugs with water and stores them around the house; he never saw the crucifixes she used to turn them into holy water.

She continues to collect scraps of information, but feels no closer to an understanding of what happened.

Time passes. Dean graduates from tricycle to training wheels, and Sam inherits the tricycle. Dean discovers comic books, and reads them to Sam. Seeing how much they love tales of heroes fighting monsters, she begins to tell them stories of her life as a hunter. She changes the names and makes all the endings happy, pretends like they are just stories, and her boys listen with wide eyes and enraptured expressions. Dean always wants to know more about the fighting, about how the heroine in her stories took down the monster. Sam is always worried that the heroine will hurt the wrong person, that maybe just because something is a monster doesn't mean it's _bad_. He likes it best when the heroine wins without fighting, when the solution is a small fire or, better yet, some Latin chanting. He begs her to teach him the exorcism, so she does, relieved that, though he thinks the stories are just stories, three-year-old Sammy will know what to do if a person with eyes all black comes at him. John likes to listen to her stories, too, and after she finishes, he kisses her sweetly and says he never knew she was so talented. He doesn't drink so much anymore, and they're back to trading off cooking and clean-up, and things are good.

One night she hears sniffling from Sam's room as she's on her way to bed. She goes in, walks softly to his bed, and sits down on the edge.

"Sammy?" He emerges from beneath the covers and crawls into her lap, bringing his stuffed toy dog and security blanket with him. He nestles against her, still sniffling, and she takes the blanket and wraps it around his shoulders and holds him close. "Sweetheart, what's wrong? Did you have a nightmare?"

She feels him shake his head, but the sniffles increase to small sobs.

"Shh, baby, shh," she soothes, rocking him gently back and forth. "You know you can tell Mommy anything, right? No matter how bad or silly you think it is, you can tell me. I love you so much, Sam, and I want to help you feel better if I can."

"I'm . . . _bad_," he gasps out between sobs.

She strokes his hair. "What do you mean? Did you do something you think you shouldn't have?"

"N-no . . . _I'm_ bad," he says, little voice urgent with despair as he tries to get his breathing under control.

"Sammy, love, I still don't understand. Why do you think you're bad?"

"Dean's comic." He's back to sniffles now, trying hard to stop crying.

The three-year-old logic still escapes her. "Dean's comic? One of the ones he read to you?"

"Yes. Gawahad was good, so dey let him go on da special quest. Dere was light and he was _good_. Dey wouldn't let me go on da special quest betause I'm not good. Gawahad was all cwean inside, but I'm not. I'm bad, Mommy, I'm bad!" And he dissolves into sobs again.

Mary holds him close and strokes his hair and feels her heart break, because she knows there _is_ something bad inside of Sam, and it looks like he can sense it somehow. For long moments she just holds her beautiful, innocent, _good_ little boy, at a loss for what to do, what to say to make it all better when she doesn't understand nearly enough about what the demon did and what it means for Sam. But then her brain draws her attention to her own thoughts, and she thinks she knows what to say.

"Sam, I want you to listen to me very carefully, OK?" She waits as the sobs fade once again to sniffles, and Sam nods his head against her chest. "Whether you're good or bad isn't decided by what you are. If you do mostly good things, you're good. And I _know_, my sweet little Sammy, that you do mostly good things, and that makes you _good_."

Sniffle. "It does?"

"Yes, baby, it does. You're good, and I love you, and nothing in the whole universe will ever make me stop loving you, OK?"

There's a silence filled only by Sam's diminishing sniffles. She grabs a tissue from the box on his nightstand and gently wipes the tears and snot from his face.

"I'm good if I do good?" he asks, sounding heartbreakingly hopeful.

"That's right."

"Even if I'm bad inside?"

"Even if there's a part of you that's bad inside."

"And you wuv me for aways?"

"And I love you for always."

He throws his arms around her neck and buries his face in her shoulder, and she holds him tight, and they sit like that.

After a while, Mary hears that Sam's breathing has evened out into the rhythm of sleep, so she gently lays him down and tucks him back into bed, whispering her love into his ear one last time before she leaves the room.


	2. Chapter 2

At the beginning of the summer before Sam starts kindergarten, Sam and Dean are playing superheroes in the back yard, and SuperDean decides it's a good idea to jump off the shed, and BatSam does what he always did at the time: he follows his brother. Unfortunately for Sam, nine-year-old Dean has much better odds of surviving that particular piece of stellar decision-making unscathed than he does, five years old and convinced he can do anything Dean can, even if it's something Dean shouldn't be doing in the first place.

Mary is inside reading a translation of an obscure Latin text that a new contact sent her. His name is Bobby Singer, and though "rough around the edges" is a bit of an understatement, he's already proving invaluable. He'd gotten into the life after losing his wife to a demon a few years ago, so demons are his main focus. She wants to ask him how he learned Latin that quickly: she can't imagine a mechanic having a need for it, but she doesn't want to be rude or make him think she's underestimating him. She learned a long time ago that, just because hunters in general aren't exactly the most educated people you could meet, doesn't mean they aren't smart. Have to be, to survive for any length of time without getting arrested or killed.

She's just finished underlining a sentence about soldiers for a coming war when she hears Dean yelling. At first, she thinks the boys are just having an argument, so she waits to see if they'll work it out for themselves without her intervention.

"What'd you do that for?! You shoulda known better than to follow me! 'Sides, _everyone_ knows Batman can't fly. Here, lemme _see_."

And then Sam screams, and Mary is running. Part of her knows that the level of terror she feels is completely out of proportion to the situation, and the rest of her can't help it, knowing what she knows.

She finds them on the ground by the shed. Sam is sitting, tears streaming down his face, clearly trying to keep the crying under control. He's cradling his right arm against his chest. Dean stands next to him, looking pale and angry and terrified.

Mary could almost laugh with relief that this is something so mundane, and then immediately feels guilty at how relieved she is when Sam is clearly hurt and upset, and Dean is clearly not handling it well.

She runs forward and drops to her knees in front of Sam. "Sammy, sweetheart, are you hurt?" He nods. "Is it your arm?" He nods again. "Can I see?" He hesitates, and she realizes that Dean, thinking or hoping that it wasn't that bad, must have grabbed Sam's arm too harshly, and that's why he screamed. But then he nods, and slowly holds it out to her. There's already some ugly bruising, but she thinks it would probably take more than bruises to make Sam holler like that, especially in front of Dean. "Can I touch it?" He nods again, and she, as gently and lightly as she can, runs her hands over it. He whimpers when she touches the worst of the bruises. Her brave, quiet little Sammy.

"OK," she says, picking Sam up as gently as she can, trying not to think about how soon he will be too big for her to easily do so. "We're going to the doctor, and they're going to make you all better, OK Sammy?" She feels him nod against her shoulder. "And on the way to drop Dean off with Daddy, you can both tell me what happened," she adds, leading the way to the car, her last comment directed mostly at Dean.

"It wasn't my fault!" Dean insists, as soon as both boys are buckled in and Mary is in the driver's seat. "He shouldn't've been following me. He should've known he's too little!"

"Too little for what?" Mary asks.

Dean seems to realize, or else remember, that what he himself did probably isn't a Mom-approved activity, and just because he isn't hurt doesn't mean he isn't in trouble. "You never said we couldn't!" he tells her.

"Couldn't what, Dean?" she presses, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror, reminded very forcefully of the time she'd gotten stuck after climbing too high in the tree in the yard, and tearfully telling her dad exactly the same thing when he'd asked what she'd been doing climbing so high.

"Jump off the shed," Dean finally, very quietly, tells his knees.

"So, you were playing superheroes, and you jumped off the shed, and then Sam jumped after you, and he hurt his arm. Is that right?"

"Everyone _knows_ Batman can't fly!" Dean practically wails.

"_I_ didn't!" Sam shouts, speaking for the first time. "He's _Bat_man, and bat's fly! 'Sides, he flies in your comics!"

"That's _gliding_, stupid!"

"Dean Winchester, you apologize to your brother right now!"

"But—"

"_Now_, Dean."

"Sorry being called stupid made you feel like the baby you are," Dean sulks.

"Are you sure, Dean? Are you sure that's how you want to apologize?" Mary asks, and Dean finally recognizes the dangerous ground he's on.

"I'm sorry I called you stupid and I'm sorry if it hurt your feelings," he amends, even sulkier than before.

"And?" she presses.

"And I will teach you about Batman's powers so you don't say stu—"

"_Dean_."

"So you'll know about that."

"_And_?"

"And I will _try_ not to call you stupid again."

Mary sighs. Stubborn like his father. _Stubborn like you_, the uncomfortably honest part of her brain reminds her.

"Is now the part where I say I forgive him?" Sam asks in a small, tearful voice.

She feels her heart melt. She would love to give herself or John credit for Sam's tenderness, and maybe she can a little, but really it's mostly just Sam. He's sitting there, his arm probably broken as a result of following Dean's very bad example, Dean trying to absolve himself of all blame by insulting Sam, and Sam's already forgiven him. She doesn't know how he shines so bright, but he does.

"You can if that's how you feel. But you know, Sammy, it's OK if it takes you a while to forgive when someone hurts you. You don't have to do it right away."

"It's OK. I don't want Dean to feel bad. And I want to know all about Batman." She sees in the rearview mirror that he turns to face Dean. "I forgive you, Dean."

She's pretty sure Dean looks less angry but more miserable than he did before. Maybe this is a learning opportunity: maybe they can nip Dean's instinct to lash out in self-protection in the bud.

They pull up to the garage and, after checking with Sam that he'll be OK for just a few minutes, Mary gets out with Dean.

As soon as they're out of earshot of the car, Dean grabs her arm and pulls her to a stop. "Sam's gonna be OK, right? He's not hurt real bad?" he asks, eyes wide with fear, and, she thinks, hardly any of it is for himself.

"His arm might be broken, but I'm sure he'll be fine," she reassures him.

He nods, but doesn't look any less upset. Mary starts walking again, tugging Dean gently along. "It's my fault, isn't it?" she hears him whisper, so quietly he might almost be talking to himself.

"No, sweetheart, it isn't. You didn't make very good choices while you were playing, but Sam chose to jump, just like you did. You weren't very nice to him afterwards, though, were you?"

"No," he mumbles. "I was just . . . I didn't want it to be my fault. I didn't want him to be hurt."

"I understand that, baby, but was yelling at him and grabbing him where he said he was hurt a good thing to do?"

"No."

"OK. I'm glad you know that." They've reached the waiting area by now. "Now, you sit here while I go find Dad, and maybe you can think about how you could have made better choices today." He nods, still miserable.

She finds John and summarizes the situation. He sighs deeply and says he'll talk to Dean. Mary smiles and kisses him on the cheek, then hurries back to the car while John goes to retrieve Dean. She hopes their talk is sufficiently uncomfortable for Dean; otherwise he'll have gotten an afternoon at the garage out of his poor choices, and for him that's the opposite of punishment. But when she turns to take one last look, she sees Dean with head hanging, avoiding John's eyes. John has a way with people: something about him makes disappointing him the last thing anyone wants to do. It's not something he's cultivated, not really, but he doesn't need to: it's that sweet, earnest face of his, the way he quietly steps up and gets things done, the way he's just _good_, in spite of what he's been through. She's more immune than most, because she knows his bad traits, too, but she's not entirely unaffected. And Dean, well, Dean worships the ground his father walks on. OK, the talk they have will probably be more than sufficiently uncomfortable for Dean.

Sam is quiet throughout the afternoon's ordeal. Sure enough, his arm is broken. But it's clear that he's been thinking hard about everything, because once they're in the car to go home, his arm in a cast and him full of painkillers, he asks, "Mommy, why was Dean so mad at me? What did I do wrong?"

"Sweetheart, the only thing you did wrong was the same thing Dean did wrong: you jumped off the shed. That wasn't safe, and you got hurt. Dean was mad for a lot of reasons I think, but mostly because he was scared. He was scared he would get in trouble, because he's older. But mostly I think he was scared that you weren't going to be OK. Some people get mad when they're scared, and they hurt people with their words or their actions because they think it will stop them from getting hurt. It's not a good thing to do, and Dad and I talked to Dean about it. He wasn't really mad at you, baby. OK?"

"OK," he answers skeptically.

She needs to convince him, it's important that she convince him, because his little mind is working, and she still thinks about the night she found him crying because he thought he was bad from the inside, and if she lets him think that Dean was right to be angry with him, who knows what conclusions he'll come to about himself and his worth. "Sammy, do you remember when you ran into the street to get your ball last year?"

"Yeah."

"Do you remember how Daddy yelled at you to stop, and how upset he was when he got you back in the yard?"

Sam is frowning. "Yeah."

"And why was he upset? Do you remember what he told you?"

"He was scared that I might get hurt. He said he didn't know what he'd do if anything bad ever happened to me."

"That's right. But he wasn't mad at you, was he?"

"No?"

"No. He wasn't. And Dean wasn't mad at you either. It's just that some people, when they love somebody, the way they show how upset they'd be if that person got hurt is by being angry. But they're not angry at the person, they're angry at a world that might hurt them. I don't want you to feel bad about today, OK, Sammy? I don't want you jumping off the shed again, either, but I think that broken arm of yours is punishment enough, don't you?"

"OK, Mommy," he tells her solemnly.

She doesn't know whether it really sunk in, what she tried to tell him. She hopes, she prays, that it's enough.


	3. Chapter 3

Mary takes a deep breath and dials the number Bobby gave her; years of practice and she still hates cold-calling people.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is Ellen Harvelle there?"

"Speaking."

"Hi. My name is Mary Winchester. I got your number from Bobby Singer?"

"Mm'kay-_Joanna Beth you put that down_-sorry, my daughter's three years old, can't turn my back on her for a second. What were you saying?"

Mary smiles, relaxing. "Oh, believe me, I understand. A few months ago my boys jumped off the shed in the yard while they were playing superheroes, and my five-year-old broke his arm."

"Yikes. He OK?"

"Yeah, he's fine. Everything healed up normal, cast came off, he started kindergarten and loves it to pieces. It's strange, really, how quiet the house is in the mornings now. But I'm sorry, I didn't call so you'd have to listen to me ramble about my life; I actually have a favor to ask."

"Shoot."

"Bobby Singer said you and your husband run a hunter's bar?"

"That's right. You in the life, then?"

"Used to be. I tried to be out for good, but an old case showed up to bite me in the ass, and I'm having a hell of a time figuring it out. I was hoping maybe you could keep your ears open, in case anyone mentions certain things?"

"Sure thing. What should I be listening for?"

"Anything about a demon with yellow eyes, or suspicious house fires, or what a demon might want with children."

Ellen whistles. "Sounds like the big time."

"Unfortunately, the big time runs in the family. Ever hear of the Campbells?"

"Supposed to be one of the oldest hunting families in the country, passing down the lore and the life from one generation to the next, if you believe the rumors. You one of 'em?"

"Used to be."

"Say, I just remembered. We had a couple of greenhorns in here just the other day, bragging about how they were going after a cambion, you know, a demonic kid. I'm told that anyone who knows anything knows there hasn't been a confirmed case of a cambion in centuries, and never in this country, but these idiots swore up and down that they'd found one and they were gonna bring it down. That the kinda thing that might help you?"

"Yes! Did they say where they thought it was?"

"Uh, Peoria, Illinois, I think."

"Thank you so much!"

"Anytime. Can I get your number so I can call if I hear anything else? And maybe your address so I can write if it's not time-sensitive info, avoid either of us having to pay for more long-distance calls than strictly necessary?"

Mary winces; she makes sure John doesn't actually _see_ the phone bill, but that doesn't stop him from knowing it's high. "Of course. And please, let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you."

"I'll keep that in mind. Good luck. With the case and with your boys."

"Thanks. Good luck keeping your daughter out of trouble."

"Thanks. Bye, now."

"Goodbye."

Mary smiles as she hangs up: she likes Ellen. Then she remembers what Ellen told her, and worry takes over. After the demon's visit, when she encountered the lore about cambions, she had briefly panicked, wondering if Sam could be one, but then she remembered that possession victims, if they survived, were at the very least aware that something was wrong, that they were missing time, and John hadn't experienced anything like that around the time Sam was conceived, so she knew it wasn't that. But just because Sam wasn't one didn't mean the demons wouldn't try to create them elsewhere. Especially considering the cryptic, scarily apocalyptic-sounding text she'd translated over the summer, which talked about a war, with certain chosen, powerful humans fighting on hell's side. She still doesn't understand most of it: it's full of ramblings about the First and seals and brothers and vessels, and she doesn't know if the author was crazy or on drugs or trying to transcribe visions they themselves didn't understand or all of the above.

What she does know is that she's scared. Scared for Sam, her sweet little boy who loves everything about school and worships the ground his rough-and-tumble brother walks on and doesn't even try to be subtle about how much he wants a puppy for Christmas. And who was touched by a demon of unknown but undoubtedly malevolent intent. She's scared for her family, for what might happen to them if the demon ever comes back, if it somehow gets control of Sam. Scared for the world at large, because demon activity that's anything other than crossroads deals and random acts of evil for its own sake means trouble.

Mary gets a letter from Ellen a few weeks later: false alarm on the cambion. Apparently, the demonic omens the hunters thought were coming from a little girl were actually because her babysitter was possessed. Acting on a terrible hunch, Mary calls Ellen and asks how old the girl is, and Ellen says she's five.

The same age as Sam.

"Did the demon do anything besides possess the babysitter?"

"No, and that's the weird thing. No one noticed anything strange, even though the poor woman said she was possessed for months. The demon seems to've made an effort to impersonate her, to not arouse suspicion; I always thought demons went off the rails pretty quick once they found a host."

"Yeah, usually," Mary says distantly. A little girl the same age as Sam. Her babysitter possessed for months, the demon doing nothing but living the babysitter's life. Which would give it proximity to the girl. Who was Sam's age. What if . . .

"Mary? You OK?" Ellen asks.

"What? Oh, yes, fine. I mean, it is strange, and demons behaving out-of-character worries me, but other than that I'm fine."

"If you say so. Oh, did I tell you Jo nearly got into her dad's knife collection the other day?"

"Yikes!"

"You're telling me. The new one I ripped that man!"

"You never know how good they are at getting into stuff until they do."

"Ain't that the truth. You must've figured out how to keep your gear on lock down early on."

"Well, it's all packed away in the basement, so the only worry was John's gun."

"He a hunter?"

"God, no. He has no idea. He was a Marine."

"Oh. Wait, you're on a case and your husband doesn't even know monsters exist?" Ellen asks incredulously.

Mary sighs. "It's complicated, OK? I want to tell him, but . . . "

"You're worried he'll think you're nuts."

"Exactly!"

"And then be pissed you never told him."

"That, too."

"Yeesh."

"Did you tell Bill about monsters, or did he tell you?"

"Not really either. He was on a salt and burn case a few years back; the ghost went after my friend, I got lucky and grabbed a fire iron and was able to fend it off until suddenly it went up in flames. This handsome hunk of a man in a leather jacket showed up not long after to make sure we were all right and reassure us that we weren't crazy, because ghosts were real but it was OK, he took care of it. And here I am five years later, married to the sonofabitch and running his Roadhouse with a kid underfoot."

Mary hears the fondness in Ellen's voice and understands the feeling. "Sounds nice and simple," she says.

"In a way, yeah, I guess it was. Listen, Mary, I know it's not really my business, but it seems to me the longer you wait to tell John, the worse it'll be. I could come back you up, make Bill mind the shop for a few days. I mean, I know we hardly know each other, but I like you, and I don't exactly meet a lot of other moms who I can tell about all the parts of my life, you know?"

Mary does know, and she's touched. "That's really sweet of you Ellen, but I'll have to think about it. I guess I keep hoping that I'll have this demon thing settled before I tell John, so it can be something to put behind us, but I'm starting to think that's not going to happen any time soon. I'll let you know, OK?"

"Sure thing. I mean, it's your life, you gotta do what you gotta do."

"I appreciate that, but I really will think about it. And you feel free to write me any time you want to talk about anything, OK? Kids, stubborn husbands in leather jackets, anything."

Ellen laughs. "You got it."

As soon as she gets off the phone with Ellen, Mary calls Missouri. She tells her, briefly, about the possessed babysitter and her suspicion that it might be somehow related to the yellow-eyed demon and Sam.

"You're worried there's a demon possessing someone close to Sam, keeping an eye on him, and you want to know if that's something I could sense," Missouri says shrewdly.

"Well, can you?"

"Not from a distance, honey, I'm sorry. But let's take a deep breath and look at this logically. All the protection on your house is still in place, right?"

Mary does a thorough check once a week. "Yes."

"So it can't be anyone who comes inside your house regularly. Besides people who work at his school, is there anyone else who sees Sam often but doesn't come to your house?"

"No, I guess it would just be people at the school. I could bring his teacher some coffee with holy water in it, but there's still cafeteria workers and recess monitors and the librarian and, god, even the other kids. There's no way to check them all!"

"Deep breaths, Mary. Deep breaths. I'll find some excuse to go to the school and do a walk-through during the day some time-trust me, if there's a demon around, I'll know, and we can figure out what to do about it from there. And in the mean time, just remember that, even if you're right and there's a connection between your boy and what happened in Peoria, the demon there didn't hurt anyone besides the poor soul it possessed, and certainly not that little girl, so you and yours are probably safe for now."

Right. OK. She can do this. "Thanks, Missouri. For everything."

"Oh, hush. It's like I keep telling you, I do this because you pay me and because I want this town safe. I'll let you know once I know one way or the other, all right?"

"All right."

"Good. You just keep on keepin' on, then."

"You, too."

Missouri finds nothing at the school, but she keeps checking on an irregularly regular basis. Mary and Ellen write a lot of letters back and forth, mostly about their kids and their husbands and whether drunk hunters or young kids are harder to wrangle (they agree that it's definitely young kids). Ellen tells Mary about the balance between running the Roadhouse and being there for her family that never really feels like balancing; Mary tells her about how hard it is to get a moment to herself when she wants it, and yet at the same time there are days when she is nearly overwhelmed with loneliness when John is at work and the boys are at school. Ellen sometimes asks about the case, and occasionally whether Mary has told John about hunting yet. As much as she would like to, Mary can't quite bring herself to resent this, because somewhere along the line Ellen became her best friend.

Being in school gives Sam the beginnings of a circle of friends, and it eases some of the tension caused by Dean's growing desire to have some space from Sam, some of the time. Sam is in his element in school: he loves learning, and he's sweet and quiet, so his teacher loves him. Nearly every day, the first thing he says when he gets home is "Did you know . . . ?" followed by something new he learned. Dean rolls his eyes and asks Sam if he's ready to do homework for two yet, but never takes the teasing further because Sam always turns to him wide-eyed and sweet and says that he _can't_ do fourth-grade homework, he's not smart enough yet. Mary chooses not to point out that it's not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of age and development, because her boys seem to need this routine, this reassurance that Dean is older and wiser. She'll let them have it now, because it can't last forever.

That May, Sam's birthday present is the promise that, as soon as summer vacation starts, they'll go to the pound and help him choose a dog. He and a sweet young spaniel mix named Sadie, brown and white and all floppy ears and wagging tail and soulful eyes, fall for each other as if they were soulmates, and that's that. Sam takes his responsibilities as a dog owner very seriously, and never needs to be reminded to give her food and water and keep her groomed and exercised. John helps him with the obedience training, and they have Sadie doing tricks in no time. Sam's less than fond of cleaning up after her, and John has to physically separate the boys the first time Dean steps in dog poop in the yard: Sam couldn't stop laughing, but Dean didn't think it was funny at all, and things got out of hand fast. After that, Dean makes sure Sam _always_ knows when there's a mess to clean up in the yard. Mary's not sure letting Dean be the minder for this chore is the best idea, but she suspects Sam is more likely to get it done if it's Dean who's bothering him, rather than she and John.

It's Dean's fifth summer playing baseball, and that fall Sam starts soccer. A boy on the team, Doug, quickly becomes Sam's best friend, to the point that, sometimes, it's Dean who seeks out Sam for some brother time, rather than the other way around. Mary isn't sure, but it looks like Dean starts to have to try a little to best Sam when they play soccer one-on-one in the yard.

With both of the boys in school full-time, Mary starts perusing job listings, because the extra money couldn't hurt, and she wouldn't mind getting out of the house a bit more. She lands a secretary job in the liberal arts department at the university, and finds that she loves it.

In second grade, Sam is the best speller in his grade for the third year in a row. His reading level is very high for his age, but he still likes it when Dean reads comic books out loud to him, though he no longer parrots Dean on what his favorites are. Dean continues to prefer Batman, Superman, Iron Man, and Captain America, while Sam likes the X-men, the Avengers, and, after his friend Keisha put him onto it, Wonder Woman. Mary has to have a talk with Dean after she hears him tell Sam that Sam gets a pass for liking Wonder Woman because she's "hot." She has a second talk with John to discover whether he's part of where Dean picked up that idea. He isn't, but he promises to pay closer attention to what the other guys at the garage are talking about when Dean is there.

When Sam is in third grade, Dean starts junior high, and adds wrestling and shop class to his interests. He and his friends are hitting puberty, and Mary learns quickly to keep a lot more food around the house if she wants any left for people who aren't preteen boys.

It's also the year a demon gets into the house.

A few weeks before spring break, John and Mary are washing dishes when he says, "I've been thinking. You know that friend of yours, Ellen?"

John has known about Mary's friendship with Ellen for a few years—Mary told him a friend of a friend put them in contact because of mutual interests, which was true. John had raised his eyebrows at Mary's lack of specificity, then grinned and said "you women and your secrets," which earned him a light smack on the shoulder and the opportunity to volunteer for extra dish duty.

"What about her?" Mary asks, instantly on the alert.

"Well, I was thinking it might be nice if you gals could actually get together. What do you think about maybe going to see her during the break, or even just part of it? Think she'd be game?"

Mary stares, too stunned to speak at first. "You're suggesting I . . . go away, just me, to see a friend, for up to a week?" she clarifies when she finds her voice.

John shrugs, grinning. "Yeah, why not. 'Bout time you had some you time. What, you think I can't handle things for a week?"

She raises her eyebrows.

"Ouch," he says. "But fair, I guess, since I haven't actually done it before. Here's what I'm thinking: between the boys liking the garage, going to their friends' houses, and maybe hiring your friend Missouri to do a little babysitting, that's got the days while I'm at work covered. Plus I was thinking about taking one or two days off, have some concentrated father/son time. Anyway, then evenings are mostly like normal, except with non-school bedtimes and you not here. I can cook, they can help clean, everything will be fine."

"You've really thought about this, haven't you?"

"I just think you deserve a break, and I know how much you look forward to Ellen's letters. So, if you wanna call her, see if she's up for it, then do."

Mary leans over and kisses John on the cheek. "OK."

"Hell yeah," Ellen says over the phone. "I'll make Bill mind Jo and the Roadhouse, you and me can kick back with a few cold ones."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Well then," Mary says, grinning into the phone, "I'll see you in a few weeks."

Of course, the closer her departure gets, the more nervous Mary is about leaving John and the boys alone.

"Mom's just worried we'll burn the house down," John jokes when Sam asks her what's wrong.

"Or break the windows," Dean adds, tossing his baseball in the air and catching it, then putting it down sheepishly when Mary raises her eyebrows at him: he knows he isn't allowed to throw baseballs in the house.

"Or put each other in the hospital," John suggests, grabbing Sam, who still looks solemn and concerned, and throwing him over his shoulder and running around the room while Dean cheers and Sadie chases them, jumping up and wagging her tail. Sam is reduced to gasping giggles in no time, and Mary can't help but smile.

"So what d'you think, Sammy?" John asks, coming to a halt and spinning Sam around so he hangs upside down in front of him. "Is Mom right to be worried? Are we just a powder keg of reckless behavior waiting to go off in the absence of her rational influence?" Sam grins and nods as best he can, the sparkle in his eyes matching John's.

"What?" John cries, mock-outraged, and puts Sam down so he can tackle him to the floor. Dean immediately leaps into the fray while Sadie runs circles around the three, doing her best to get in on the excitement while avoiding the tangle of flailing limbs. Mary, laughing, grabs a pillow from the couch and whacks at the impromptu wrestling match, aiming for John as much as she can. As always, part of her is tempted to participate, but she's still not sure what lie John might believe about where she got her skill set, so she leaves them to it. Besides, someone needs to have a bird's eye view so that Dean doesn't get carried away with using his actual wrestling moves on Sam when they play like this.

"This—is—not—reassuring!" Mary says through her laughter, punctuating each word by whacking John with the pillow. He manages to get both boys pinned against him and sits up. Sam is laughing; Dean looks like he's calculating how long it will be before he has a fighting chance against John when they play like this.

"Well, boys, what do you say we show Mom how trustworthy we are by whipping up some dinner?"

"Dibs on the meat tenderizer!" Dean calls immediately.

"No fair!" Sam protests. "You got to do it last time!"

"Who says we're making anything that needs tenderizing?" John points out, letting them up and leading the way into the kitchen. Mary shakes her head fondly and just listens as John doles out instructions and Sam and Dean negotiate for their preferred tasks. Sometimes she can't believe how much she loves them.

"Will you relax!" Missouri chides over coffee the next day. "I'll keep my eye on your boys, never you fear."

"I know you will. I've just never left them alone before."

"You do remember that you were like this before Sam's first sleepover at Doug's house, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And it turned out fine, and it's been fine every time since then."

"Well then."

"Those hex bags I stashed in his backpack have a hell of a lot to do with it though."

"Lord have mercy! Your house is warded, isn't it? And you smuggled those hex bags over to the garage, too. I ain't sayin' you can't feel what you feel, but please do us both the favor of acknowledging that it's got nothing to do with reason."

Mary smiles. "Fair enough."

Missouri nods in satisfaction. "So long as that's settled."

It's a good few days. Seeing Ellen, talking face-to-face, is wonderful. Even as she doesn't quite know how to handle so much time to herself, Mary realizes how much she needed this, this break.

Bill is nice, a bit rougher around the edges than John, but he's a hunter, so she would've been surprised to find anything different. Jo is a firecracker, always on the move, always wanting to be in the middle of things, rarely looking before she leaps, both literally and metaphorically; she reminds Mary of Dean.

"She got sent to the principal's office for punching another kid on the first day of school. Had to explain that when boys say stupid shit, she needs to tell the teacher, not punch them, and I had to do it without actually saying the word 'shit' or letting on that I was damn proud of her," Ellen tells Mary.

"What did the boy say?" Mary asks.

"That girls weren't as smart as boys."

Mary whistles. "Somebody started drinking the Kool-aid young."

"Don't I know it. I had half a mind to find that boy's folks and throw some punches myself."

Mary laughs and raises her beer. "To restraining our more violent feminist tendencies, at least when the kids are around."

"I'll drink to that," says Ellen, and they clink their bottles together.

Alarm bells go off in Mary's head as soon as she steps through the door at home, but she doesn't know why until she glances down at the doormat. Or rather, where the doormat is supposed to be.

"Mary, that you?" John calls from the kitchen. She sets her bags down, forces herself to take deep breaths. Remain calm. Don't give anything away unless necessary. She grabs a bottle of holy water on her way into the kitchen.

Their neighbor, Candice, is sitting at the table with John, who stands up to give Mary a hug and a kiss. "Welcome home. And see: the house is still standing," he says with a smile.

"Yeah. Hey, what happened to the mat by the front door?" she asks, smiling at him but also watching Candice.

"There may have been some impromptu mud-wrestling at the park yesterday," John admits. "But we cleaned everything, and the mat's hanging up to dry outside; guess I forgot to put down one of the spares. But did you know there's a weird, kinda Satanic-looking symbol on the back of it?"

Candice's expressions are all perfectly in line with the way Mary expects her to react; time to step things up.

"Really?" she says, going to the fridge and pretending to take the bottle of holy water she's holding out of it. "That's a little disturbing." She goes to stand next to Candice and sloppily pours herself a glass of water. Candice's hand hisses and smokes where the holy water hits, and Mary springs, hauling the demon out of the chair and onto the kitchen mat.

"Mary, what the hell—?"

"Not now, John," she snaps, glaring steely-eyed at the demon possessing her neighbor. "Is Candice still in there?" she demands.

The demon's eyes flash black, and it grins. "Only one way to find out."

"What are you doing in my home?"

"Checking up on the prince. You shouldn't worry so much: we want him to grow up big and strong and smart just as much as you do."

"Why?"

The demon mimes locking it's lips and tossing away the key. Mary splashes holy water in its face. It gasps and hisses and grins up at her.

"Sorry, but you'll have to do better than that if you want me to give up any state secrets."

Mary smiles, and it does not reach her eyes. "Oh, but you already did. _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica. Ergo, draco maledicte. Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos_!" Black smoke streams from Candice's mouth and sinks through the floor, and Mary catches her as she collapses, checking for vital signs. Still alive: the demon wasn't in her for long. She turns to John. "Help me get her to the living room." He opens his mouth to protest, to ask a million questions, to demand an explanation. "I'll explain everything in a minute. First help me with her." He complies; she wonders if it's because he realizes they should get Candice comfortable or because she's pretty sure she just did a really good impression of a commanding officer. As he's always telling her, once a Marine, always a Marine.

"Mary, _what the hell_," John says, once they have Candice laid out on the couch.

"She was possessed by a demon," she tells him matter-of-factly. Time to rip the bandaid off. "The weird, kinda Satanic-looking symbol on the bottom of the mat is called a devil's trap. I put them underneath every mat and rug in the house, so if a demon ever got inside it would get stuck and I could ask it questions and then send it back to hell. That's what the Latin was: I exorcised it."

"Demon. Demons are real."

"You have some other explanation for what you just saw?"

"No, I don't. But how did you know what to do? And why would you think demons would come here?"

Before Mary can explain, Candice groans and stirs. Mary immediately drops down next to her and helps her sit up. "Hey, Candice, how're you feeling?"

"What? I . . . what am I doing here? I don't remember . . ."

Mary suppresses a sigh of relief. "Outside, you fell and hit your head. I just got home, saw the whole thing, so we helped you inside."

"Sounds about right-feels like I got hit by a truck," Candice mumbles.

"Nothing so serious," Mary reassures her. "Would you like some water?"

"Uh, yeah, that's probably a good idea. Should I call the doctor, or-?"

"We already did," John cuts in, meeting Mary's eyes; she goes to get Candice the water. "He said to take it easy for the rest of the day, but that as long as there's not too much bruising or pain there's no need to worry about it. There isn't, is there? We checked for bruises, but we might've-"

"No, no, I think it's OK," Candice says, sounding more sure of herself as she buys into their story. They have her out the door and walking home in no time.

John turns to Mary, arms folded. "Well?"

"Where are the boys?" she doesn't want them walking in in the middle of this conversation.

"Out back with Doug and Keisha and Heather and Brian and Eric and Rachel; they're plenty occupied."

Mary takes a deep breath, and tells John everything.

When she finishes, John paces, running his hands through his hair. "We have to . . . we have to go somewhere, keep moving, make sure they can't find us. Hard for the boys, but they'll adjust. Only way to be safe."

"John, _what are you talking about_?"

"Us, living in the same house all these years, in your parents' house, easy to find! God, Mary, what were you thinking?"

Mary feels herself flush with anger. "What was _I_ thinking? I was thinking that the best way to reduce the target was to stop being involved and live a normal life! I was thinking that children deserve the stability and safety that come with living in one place! I was thinking that it's much easier to establish protection in a permanent home than it is to have to constantly set it up in each new place! Weren't you listening when I told you everything I did to ward this house and the other places you and the boys spend time, the devil's traps and salt and holy water and hex bags? So don't you _dare_ tell me that I haven't done everything I could to keep this family safe!"

"But all that . . . you did all that _after_ a demon got in here and hurt Sam. A demon came in here, because you gave it permission, and it did something to our boy. But you want to tell me you did everything you could?" His voice is cold, eyes steely, posture tense.

"Oh, well, excuse me for not having a clear head when I was holding your _dead body_ in my arms and being shown proof that the monster who did it killed my parents, too. I'm so sorry I didn't take the time, which the demon definitely would have given me, to clear my head and consider all the ways saving you could come back to bite me in the ass. Or are you telling me you'd rather be dead, rather that we'd never built this life together, rather that our beautiful boys were never born?"

John blinks, then sinks onto the couch and buries his face in his hands. Mary remains standing, arms crossed tight over her chest. This is it. This is when he decides.

He looks up at her. "Will you sit down?"

She hesitates briefly, then does. He takes her hand. "Holy hell, Mary," is all he says for a while. She smiles at his choice of phrase.

"OK. You're right. I got no right to judge you for what you did that night, especially since I probably would've done the same thing in your place. I just . . . it's a lot, you know?"

"Yeah."

"But I know now. And I want you to teach me, and I want to help. We're in this together, and we're gonna keep this family safe together, OK?"

She nods, blinking back tears, and John takes her face in his hands and kisses her, long and deep and sweet. They are interrupted moments later when the kitchen door bangs open and Dean yells "DAD IS MOM BACK I THOUGHT I-EW GROSS GEEZ GET A ROOM." Mary and John break apart, smiling and shaking their heads.

Later that night, John and Mary agree that there is still no need to tell Sam and Dean about demons and monsters and the rest of it; they are still too young, and John and Mary don't have enough answers yet. But, armed with the new tidbit about the demons considering Sam a "prince," Mary, now with John's help, begins combing her sources anew.


	4. Chapter 4

Things settle back to normal. The school year ends, and they spend the summer going to Dean's baseball games, camping, and teaching the boys to shoot bb guns. Sam reads a lot and spends what feels like nearly every night at Doug's house, and on the other nights Doug is at theirs instead; Keisha and Heather are also fixtures. Dean has Eric and Brian. Sometimes the two groups converge, other times they keep separate. Some days, no matter which they do, fights break out. And sometimes, even now, Sam and Dean don't want to play with anyone but each other.

Then another school year, another soccer season, then wrestling. Sam continues to get good grades and be beloved by his teachers; Dean continues to do well enough when he can be bothered and is building a reputation for having a smart mouth. And the cycle goes like that for another couple of years. John becomes a partner at the garage; Mary moves up to full time at the university.

The summer before beginning ninth grade, Dean starts working part-time at the garage. He lords his new-earned wealth over Sam, whose only spending money besides his allowance comes from a paper route, but Mary also notices a suspicious increase in Sam's weekly comic book haul, and decides that they've worked this one out on their own.

Bobby Singer sends her a copy of a text he thinks might be relevant, but translating the ancient Hebrew takes time, even with both her and John working on it.

Another two years slip by, and it's Sam's turn to start junior high. He still plays soccer, and joins the school's mathletes and chess club as well.

A week after John and Mary finally finish translating the Hebrew text and manage to fit together a few significant pieces of the puzzle, disaster strikes.

It's a Saturday and, like always on a game day, Sam is already up when Mary arrives in the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast. "Morning, sweetheart," she says.

"There's a message for you," Sam says. "Dunno why she called so early—it's your friend Missouri. Yeah, she said to call her as soon as you got up, that she really needed to talk to you."

It takes Mary a moment to remember how to function, because how could this be anything other than bad news? "Mom? You OK?" Sam asks: apparently her moment of panic penetrated his game-day focus.

"Yes, I'm fine," she says, pulling herself together and going to make the call.

"Missouri? It's Mary. What's happened?" she tries to keep her voice as low as possible, hoping that Sam's insatiable curiosity won't be piqued.

"There's been an attack," Missouri says, "not that anyone else knows that's what it was, and I'm sure you'll hear the official version soon. It's Sam's friend Doug: his house burned down last night, and he and his whole family are dead." Mary claps her hand to her mouth in horror. "I'm so sorry, Mary."

"Wait," Mary says. "How was it an attack?"

"I felt something last night," Missouri explains. "Something evil, exerting its power. I jumped in my car and drove, but by the time I got there, the house was all ablaze and the fire department was there doing everything they could. Mary, honey, it felt like a much stronger version of the residue at your house the night that demon came."

"But why? Why do this? What purpose could it possibly serve?"

"Doug and Sam are—were—thick as thieves, right? Best of friends?"

"Yes. When Sam wasn't at his house, Doug was over here. They did nearly everything together. So, what, the demon wants to hurt Sam?"

"Maybe, but if I had to guess I'd say it's 'cause they think it'll make him easier to manage for whatever it is they have planned, and not just for the sake of damaging him."

"They have a soccer game today," Mary says distantly. "It'll probably be cancelled." She pulls herself together. "Thank you for calling to tell me what you know, Missouri. I should . . . I need to get off the phone."

"Of course. You call if you need help with any of it."

"Thanks." She hangs up. The phone rings again almost immediately. It's one of the other moms from the soccer team, with a slightly different version of the same news and confirmation that the game is cancelled.

Mary hangs up a second time, steeling herself. "Mom?" Sam asks. "What was all that about?"

She turns to face his furrowed brow and innocent curiosity. Twelve years old. Twelve is too young for this, but she doesn't have a choice any more. She crouches down in front of him and takes his hands; his eyes narrow in confusion. "Baby, your game's been cancelled."

"Why?" he knows there's more too it, knows something serious is happening.

"There was a fire at Doug's house last night. He and his family . . . baby, they didn't make it. I'm so sorry."

He stares at her blankly, not comprehending, perhaps refusing to comprehend. Then, "Doug . . . he's . . . dead?"

She nods, and pulls Sam into a hug, holding him tight. For a moment he stands still and unresponsive, but then he pushes against her, pulling out of the embrace.

"But how? They had smoke alarms, we did fire safety at school, he knew what to do, they all knew what to do!" His voice is rising with hysteria. "They can't be dead, they can't be! A fire, that's terrible, Doug's whole comic collection probably burnt up, but it's OK, he can have mine! And we'll raise money to replace their other stuff, and they can come stay here with us! Lucy can have my room and me'n Doug'll sleep in the living room! Mom, they can't be dead, Doug can't be dead, he _can't_!" Sam is shouting by the end, hands balled into fists, tears beginning to leak from his eyes. Mary stays still, looking at him with sorrowful compassion as he tries to process, tries to understand a world where his best friend and his best friend's parents and little sister can all be alive when he went to bed the night before and dead when he wakes up the next morning.

"I'm sorry, Sam. Sometimes knowing what to do isn't enough. Sometimes bad things happen anyway-"

"Well, that's stupid!"

"Yes it is."

"Hey, what's all the yelling?" John asks, coming downstairs in a pre-coffee daze. Mary watches him snap to alertness when he sees the look on Sam's face.

"There was a fire at Doug's house last night," Mary explains. "None of them made it."

"Fuck." Sam's eyes go wide at John's use of the forbidden word. "Let me tell you something, Sammy," John says, walking over and slinging an arm around Sam to guide him to a chair at the table. "We have bad words for a reason. They're not for everyday, all the time use, but when good people die before their time, we can let 'em fly. Wanna try?"

Sam nods. "Damn," he whispers.

"That's a good start," John says, "but you can get a lot stronger and a lot louder than that if you want. Like this: God fucking damn it to shitfucking hell."

Sam giggles: he can't help it. Mary smiles, too. John fucking Winchester. "Now, son, this is serious business. Something terrible has happened, and we are expressing how we feel about it as eloquently as we can. So show me what you've got. And speak up."

"God fucking damn it to shitfucking hell," Sam says clearly.

"That's good," John says, a smile dancing in his eyes. "Again, louder this time."

"God fucking damn it to shitfucking hell," Sam says.

"Once more."

Sam takes a deep breath. "GOD FUCKING DAMN IT TO SHITFUCKING HELL," he bellows without warning. There's a muffled crash from upstairs.

"That's what I'm talking about!" John says, giving Sam a high five. "Should we all try it together?" Sam nods. "Mary?" She smiles, shakes her head a little in amusement, and nods. "On three," John says, holding up three fingers.

"GOD FUCKING DAMN IT TO SHITFUCKING HELL," they roar. Dean's door slams.

"Uh-oh," Mary says. "Sounds like we woke the dread teenage beast."

Sure enough, Dean comes crashing down the stairs. "What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you people?! It's seven-thirty on _Saturday_."

"Language, young man," Mary chides.

"Might not bother you so much if you hadn't stayed out past your curfew," John adds.

Dean glares. "You nutjobs wanna explain why Mom just got on my case for one f-word when I'm 90 percent sure what woke me up was Sam yelling a helluva lot more than that?"

"There was a fire at Doug's house last night," John tells him. "They're all dead."

"Shit," Dean whispers, but it isn't funny anymore. "I'm sorry, Sammy. That . . . shit." He throws himself into the chair next to Sam and rests his hand on Sam's shoulder. Sam doesn't shake it off, doesn't even look like he wants to.

Mary makes a decision. "There's something else," she says. "The fire, it wasn't . . . " No, that's the wrong place to start. "Do you remember the stories I used to tell you when you were younger?"

Dean and Sam look at each other, sharing confusion with the turn the conversation has taken. "You mean the Brave Knight Marian stories?" Sam asks.

"Those are the ones. See, those stories, they weren't as fictional as you thought they were." She sees realization dawn on John's face.

"Mary? You sure about this?"

"It's time, John. I wish it wasn't, but it's time." He nods.

"What do you mean they weren't fictional?" Sam asks slowly.

"I mean . . . I mean that monsters are real, and so are the people who hunt them. My whole family, going back centuries, were hunters. They wanted me to be one, too, raised me to be one. But I wanted to be normal and safe, especially after a demon killed my parents."

"Those stories were about you?" Sam asks.

"Yeah. The real hunts weren't often as neat and clean as I made them in the stories, but yeah."

Sam and Dean look at each other, then at John.

"You knew about this?" Dean asks.

"Only for the last few years."

"And it's for real?"

"Very much so."

Dean takes his hand off Sam's shoulder and scrubs it down his face. Then, turning back to Mary: "Wow. Mom, you're badass."

"Yeah, she is," John says proudly.

"Why are you telling us now?" Sam asks. "Is it because . . . you said a demon killed Grandma and Grandpa Campbell. Did a . . . a demon kill Doug?"

Mary runs a hand through Sam's hair. "We think so, Sam. And we think it was the same one that killed my folks . . . and that came here when you were a baby."

Sam stares. "What d'you mean, it came here? Did it do something to me? Am I bad? Is Doug dead because of me?"

"Oh, no baby, no. You're not bad, and what happened to Doug is only the fault of the thing that did it. We do . . . we think the demon did do something, but we don't know what exactly. We've made some headway on the why, but not nearly as much as I'd like."

"Who's 'we'?" Dean cuts in, giving Sam a moment to try and process the information.

"Me, my friend Missouri—she's a psychic—and Dad are the only ones who know all the details. There's a network of hunters and psychics who let us know if they see or hear anything relevant, but they don't know about Sam."

"Miss Missouri is psychic?" Sam asks. "So, like, she knows about inside people's heads?"

"Something like that," Mary says, smiling.

"So she'd know if I was bad."

_Back to this_. "Yeah, she would."

Sam looks relieved, and it breaks Mary's heart. "Mom, does the demon have yellow eyes?" he asks abruptly.

It's her turn to stare. "Yes. How did you know?"

He looks down at his knees. "I have nightmares about yellow eyes. Yellow eyes in the dark, and a bad smell, and a voice saying I can have everything I've ever wanted if I just do what the eyes tell me. I never answer back, and the voice sighs and says it's disappointed, but that I'll come around. It calls me Sammy," he finishes in a whisper.

Dean leans forward, reaches out, and gently pulls Sam's face up to meet his eyes. "You tell that son of a bitch that only your family gets to call you that, yeah?"

Sam smiles, nods. "Atta boy," Dean says, patting the side of Sam's face. Sam shoves his hand away and sticks out his tongue. "See, there's my pain in the ass little brother."

"That's enough, Dean," John says, but his tone belies his words.

"So . . . what do you know? About . . . about the demon. And me," Sam asks eventually.

Mary and John exchange glances, then join Sam and Dean at the table. "We know it's very old," Mary begins, "which means it's powerful. We know it's planning something, something big. We know that you're part of that plan. We're actually pretty sure that . . ." she pauses, reaches out, and takes Sam's hand. "We're pretty sure that the demon wants you to be a leader in whatever it is. And that it has to do with getting a lot more demons out of hell and up here on earth than there usually are. We think maybe there's someone powerful down there that they're trying to get topside."

"Sam, you should know," John breaks in. "A few years back a different demon got in the house by possessing Candice from next door. Your mom took care of it, sent it back to hell, but it called you a prince first, said it was checking in on you because they wanted you to grow up strong and smart. We're still not exactly sure what that means, but it's pretty clear that for some reason they think you'll end up on their side."

"Which only proves they don't know you," Mary interjects quickly. "Because if they did they'd know you'd never work with them, never hurt anyone."

Sam looks at her then, tears in his eyes once more. "Yes I would," he whispers. "I'd hurt whatever killed Doug and Lucy and Mr. and Mrs. Lacey. I'd hurt it bad. Doesn't that mean that I _am_ what the demons want me to be?"

"No," John and Mary chorus.

"That's not the same at all, Sam," John continues. "Wanting to hurt a monster that killed innocent people—that's not evil, not at all. That shows that you care, and I can't imagine caring is something these things want you to be doing."

"But I want to hurt it just because I want it to _hurt_, not because it will stop it from hurting other people. Or at least, stopping it isn't the only reason."

"Sammy, listen to me," John says, and Mary recognizes the look in his eye, realizes where this is going. Part of her wants to put a stop to the conversation, but mostly she just wants Sam to believe, once and for all, in his own goodness. "What've they taught you about the Vietnam War in school?"

"You mean the one you fought in?"

"That's right."

"About all the bad stuff the guys we were fighting did. About how it was kind of a mess. About how a lot of people thought we shouldn't have been there in the first place, and that nobody really won."

"Sounds about right. Let me ask you something, Sam: do you think the people me and my buddies were fighting were evil?"

"I . . . I don't know. I mean, they were people, right?"

"Yeah, they were."

"Probably not then. At least not all the way."

"Yeah, I think you're right. But you know what?"

"What?"

"I still wanted to hurt them, hurt them real bad, when people I knew got hurt or killed. And it's just like you were saying, wanting to hurt them wasn't just about stopping them, it was because I wanted them to feel the pain they'd caused. Do you think that makes me evil?"

"No!"

"Well then."

"So . . . that's just what people are like?"

"Definitely," Dean chimes in. "Sammy, do you remember, uh, that thing that happened last year? In the park?"

Mary and John exchange glances, wondering if this is the closest they'll ever come to learning why, exactly, Dean and Sam had come home one day, clearly after having been in a fight, and refused to say who or how or why, instead choosing to take their punishments.

Sam glances sideways at John and Mary. "Yeah, of course."

"Well, I didn't start throwing punches because stopping those jackasses was the right thing to do."

"Yeah, I guess I knew that."

"So, what, you think you gotta be better than all of us or something?"

"No!"

"Then quit worrying! You're a good person. A frickin' goodie two shoes, most of the time. If any demon ever does what you say, it won't be because it wants to, of that I'm sure."

"OK."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good." Dean turns to John and Mary. "So will you teach us?"

"Teach you what?" Mary asks.

"How to fight monsters and demons and sh—stuff."

"What do you want to learn?" she asks cautiously.

"How to shoot a real gun," Dean says.

"How to know what it is and how to stop it," Sam says at the same time. "How to protect people," he adds quietly.

"I think that can be arranged," Mary says, smiling.

She brings her parents' journals and books of lore up from the basement and makes suggestions about where Sam should start. They sign both boys up for martial arts classes, and John agrees to take them shooting with more than just bb guns some time soon. Sam is more honest with Mary about his nightmares and his fears, and her heart breaks over and over, but she's more determined than ever to get to the bottom of it all and end the threat forever.

Mary isn't sure whether she should be concerned by the fervor with which Sam throws himself into studying the Campbell journals. His grades remain near-perfect, he works harder than ever at soccer, he still spends time with his friends and with Dean. But Mary soon realizes that all the time he used to spend reading for fun or watching TV or surfing the Internet—which they have mostly because of him, although Mary quickly realized how useful it was for her research—is now spent pouring over the journals and books of lore. Well, not quite all of it: when John casually mentions that Sam has changed the route on which he walks Sadie, Mary realizes that he's gone on those walks a lot longer than he used to be. Curious, she asks Sam if she can come with him.

He ducks his head, avoiding her eyes. "I . . . I'd rather go by myself."

"Why?" Mary asks, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice.

"Because," he whispers, staring at the floor, "I go see Doug. I mean, I go to his . . . to where he's . . ."

Mary pulls Sam into a hug and holds him close, stroking his hair. "You know," she tells him, "I used to go visit my mom's grave all the time after she died, to talk to her, tell her about what was going on, with me, her friends. Just talk. I gave her a hunter's funeral, so it was just her ashes buried there, and I don't know whether she could hear me, wherever she is, but that wasn't the point. It was just that I missed her. So you go ahead, take Sadie for her walk. And tell Doug hi for me, if you want,"she finishes, pulling back and resting her hands on Sam's shoulders as she looks him in the eye.

He nods, wiping his eyes while smiling a small, sad smile, and mumbles "Thanks, Mom," as he goes to grab Sadie's leash.


	5. Chapter 5

Time slips by. That spring, Sam starts running track. In the summer, Dean works full time at the garage, and they promise him a job once he graduates. Since Dean loves the work and John assures her he's brilliant at it, Mary doesn't worry about her older son's lack of college aspirations. He graduates with a 2.75, and they cheer for him as loud as they can when he walks.

When Sam gets to high school that fall, he joins the debate team and the drama department's tech crew. Mary worries that he doesn't sleep enough, but he's happy and his grades are still near-perfect, so she doesn't push it. She even thinks that having practically zero free time helps him cope when Sadie dies of old age that winter, though, remembering the way Sam dove into hunting lore after Doug's death, she suspects that if his schedule hadn't already been full, he would have remedied that.

In the spring, John declares that he misses having a dog around the house, and he and Sam go to the animal shelter and return with a pit bull called Harley and, to Mary's surprise and delight, a young cat named Quinn.

"We fell for this one," John explains sheepishly, rubbing the pit bull's ears, "and apparently she and the cat are inseparable, and I know you like cats, so . . ." Dean walks in to see what all the fuss is about, sneezes, curses, and walks out again. "I guess we'll need to stock up on allergy medicine." Mary shakes her head in fond exasperation. John's tough old Marine act might not be an act, but it doesn't change the fact that underneath it he's the world's biggest softy.

That summer, John finally talks Mary into going on a hunt ("for practice," he always says), so she finds them a case nearby, a run-of-the-mill salt-and-burn. She's not sure she likes the twin gleams in John and Dean's eyes when they have to fend off the spirit while she and Sam light it up.

In the mean time, the Internet's increasing scope has allowed them to really widen their net as they try to find the information that will let them put the remaining pieces of the puzzle about the demon and Sam together.

"Why don't we just focus on how to kill it?" Dean asks one day. "I mean, Mom, you've been trying to find out about this thing for Sam's whole life, and there's still a lot we don't know and might never. But if we kill it, then it doesn't matter anymore, right?"

"Yeah, 'cause no bad guy ever had henchmen or seconds or anything like that," Sam deadpans. "There's definitely, absolutely no way that other demons could possibly pick up the torch if we take out Yellow Eyes."

"All right, all right. Geez."

"And it's not like there's anyone around here who, oh, I don't know, might want to understand what Yellow Eyes did and how it might affect them for the rest of their life. Nope, definitely no situation like that at all," Sam continues.

"Yeah, you made your point, Sammy."

"It's Sam."

"Whatever."

For what feels like the millionth time, Mary considers broaching the subject of Dean maybe getting his own place. But just a few hours later he and Sam are playing Mario Kart and laughing and joking like they're the best of friends, and even though she knows it's only a matter of time before they're sniping at each other again, she can't bring herself to break up the party. Plus, as long as Dean is still under her roof, she knows he sleeps safe—and so do the girls she's pretty sure he thinks he's sneaky about bringing home.

When Sam is sixteen, Mary realizes that Keisha and Heather, who have been Sam's friends since grade school, don't really come around anymore. In fact, it occurs to her, she isn't sure when Sam last had someone over for a reason not related to homework or one of his extracurriculars, and she has a sneaking suspicion she knows why.

She finds him in his room, reading.

"Sam?"

He looks up. "Yeah, Mom?"

"I was just wondering—it's been a while since I've seen Heather and Keisha. Did you have a falling out, or is everyone just too busy these days, or—?"

Sam flushes. "No, nothing like that. I mean, we _are_ busy, crazy busy, but that's not it."

Mary comes in and closes the door behind her. "Then what?"

He looks down. "I don't want . . . I mean, uh . . ."

Oh. Mary suppresses a smile. Maybe it isn't what she feared after all. "Sweetie, are you interested in one of them? Romantically?"

Sam blushes even more. Bingo. "I don't know, maybe. I mean, it doesn't matter one way or another with Heather—I told you she came out, right?" Mary nods. "Yeah, she and Shannon started dating a couple weeks ago, actually. They're really happy," he says wistfully.

"So, Keisha, then," Mary pushes.

"Kinda, yeah," Sam finally admits.

"And, what, she's not interested?"

"Worse—I think she is."

Oh. So it probably is what Mary thought. Still, best not to assume. "Sorry, I don't understand why that's a bad thing."

"Because if the demon killed Doug and his whole family just because he was my friend, what do you think it would do if I got . . . _involved_ with someone?"

And there it is. Her kind, sweet, selfless Sammy, putting everything and everyone before his own happiness, always thinking things through. And the worst part is, it's not as if she can tell him his fears are groundless.

"I just hate to see you missing out, not letting yourself—"

"But I'm right, aren't I? And it would be selfish to put Keisha or anyone else in danger just so I can . . . whatever."

"We could make hex bags, you could hide them at her house, in her purse . . ."

"Mom."

"Yeah, I know." She sighs. "Well, I guess we'll just have to step up our game, huh?"

Sam smiles lopsidedly. "What do you think I've been doing?" he asks, holding up the book he's reading: an obscure demonology text she's pretty sure he ordered off the Internet.

Mary smiles back. "That's my boy." She leaves him to it.

One Saturday, a couple of months after Sam's seventeenth birthday, Mary comes into the kitchen where Sam and Dean are shuffling around, sleepily making themselves coffee and breakfast. They're standing next to each other at the counter, and suddenly she realizes what she's seeing. "Boys," she says, trying to suppress a smile. They turn to her in unison. "Could you stand back-to-back for me?" They glance at each other in tired consternation, shrug, and do as she asked.

"Really stand up straight," she tells them, grabbing a large hardback from the kitchen table. They comply, and she reaches up on tiptoe to set the book on their heads, laughing at their near-identical expressions of _what the hell, Mom?_ Sure enough, the book tilts slightly down towards Dean. "John," she calls, "you need to come see this!"

John ambles in, takes in the spectacle, and slowly shakes his head. Sam grabs the book off his and Dean's heads, and they turn to face their parents, confusion written all over their faces.

"Hate to break it to you, Dean," John says, "but you have officially surrendered the title of tallest Winchester."

"Wait, what?" Dean asks, aghast, as a slow grin spreads its way across Sam's face. He'd shot up like the proverbial weed during the last year, and now he's living the younger brother dream. He and Dean turn to face each other, Sam making a show of looking down at Dean, exaggerating the distance.

"Sorry, big brother. Or whatever I call you now."

Dean puts him in a headlock.

"Not in the kitchen," Mary reminds them, and she and John step out of the way as Sam lets himself be dragged to the living room.

"Look, coffee!" John says, and pours some for himself and Mary as they hear the crash of tall, muscular bodies hitting the living room floor.

Sam's senior year, everything comes together: all the years of gathering scraps of lore and rumor and hearsay, and they finally have a more-or-less complete picture. The demon is probably Azazel, who may or may not be a fallen angel. It wants to unleash hell on earth, but to do that it needs to open a gateway so that a lot of demons can come up at once. And to do that, it needs a human with special abilities, one it can somehow turn to its purposes.

They've also learned of the existence of a special gun, made by Samuel Colt. According to the lore, and to Colt's journal, which they found among Mary's parents' possessions, it can kill literally anything. So, as best they can tell, find the gun, find the demon, bang, party's over, they can finally get on with their lives and, as Dean insists on flippantly pointing out, Sam can finally go on a date. Sam shoots Dean a very eloquent expression in response—Mary once marveled to John that she doesn't know where Sam got that, at which point John raised his eyebrows and just looked at her meaningfully until she whacked him lightly on the shoulder. He just grinned and said "my point exactly."

But tracking down both the gun and the demon proves difficult and time-consuming. Sam, meanwhile, gets accepted to _Stanford_ with some very impressive scholarships. Between that, what John and Mary have saved to contribute, and what Sam himself has saved from his job at the library, he's more than set.

But then, in the spring: "I'm going to defer my enrollment," Sam says at dinner one night, out of the blue.

They all freeze. "Come again?" John says.

"Stanford. I'm gonna wait a year. I checked, I can do it without losing any of my scholarships."

"And why the hell would you do that?" Dean asks, clearly baffled.

Sam looks at Mary, and she sees that he knows that she understands, and is silently asking for her to back him up. "You want to wait until we take care of the demon, don't you? So that you don't have to worry about anyone getting hurt."

He nods.

John and Dean are silent: they know there isn't a good counter-argument; they also probably recognize the look in Sam's eyes, the one that means he isn't backing down no matter what anyone says.

"Well," John finally says. "I guess that just means we have to step up our game, now that we've got a solid deadline to work with."

Sam looks relieved. "Thanks, Dad."

"One condition," Mary says suddenly, as inspiration strikes.

Sam turns to her in consternation.

"Take Keisha to prom."

"Mom!"

"I'm serious, Sam. It's one night. You go, you have fun with your friends, stay out way past your curfew, the whole nine yards. It's just prom. People go to prom together all the time without it meaning anything more."

Dean is starting to look like Christmas came early, so Mary kicks him under the table before he can open his mouth. He flinches and stays quiet.

"OK," Sam quietly acquiesces. "You're right: one night won't hurt."

"That's my boy," John enthuses.

Prom comes and goes, and Mary is delighted to overhear Sam admitting to Dean, under the duress of Dean being an enormous pain in the ass until Sam gives him details, that Sam and Keisha kissed. He's quick to clarify that that's all it was, that they aren't seeing each other now—Mary had been the one to suggest, privately, that Sam use the excuse that they would soon be attending college on opposite ends of the country for why, as much as he liked her, he didn't want to start a relationship, just have a good time together at the dance, and he had smiled gratefully, even though she's pretty sure he could've come up with that on his own—but she's still glad to hear that, for at least one night, Sam just let himself be a high school senior at the prom with the girl he liked.

Sam's valedictorian, and they all whoop and holler at his graduation, Dean especially. Then graduation parties (Mary and John give Sam his own laptop; Dean gives him a car he fixed up so it runs like it's new) and one last summer with his friends, most of whom are going off to college in the fall, a few locally, but most are scattering around the country. Once he's helped pack up the last of his friend's cars and said his final goodbyes, Sam gets to work, and Mary sees a side to her younger son that she quickly realizes must have been there all along, because how else could he have gotten top grades and done all the extracurriculars he did so well at the same time - she's just never seen it so out in the open before.

He's driven, laser-focused, a machine. He works out, does his shifts at the library, does his chores at home, and researches and tracks down leads on Azazel and the Colt. It's almost more effort than it's worth to get him to play video games with Dean or watch TV or a movie with the three of them in the evenings. Almost, but not quite, because Mary recognizes this obsession, and she knows what happens when hunters let cases consume them like this, so she has no qualms siccing Dean on Sam, because Dean can always at least irritate Sam enough to get him out of his head for a while, and often once that happens he can also be persuaded to call a friend or read a novel or go to a movie.

"I found it," Sam says abruptly one day from his nest of research on the kitchen table.

"Found what?" Mary asks cautiously.

"The Colt. I know where it is."

"Wait, really?" She goes over to him.

"Yeah. Or at least, I'm pretty sure I know who has it. You ever hear of a Daniel Elkins?"

Mary groans.

"So that's a yes?" Sam asks, eyebrows raised.

"He's a hunter, with the usual hunter personality in spades."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning he's a stubborn, paranoid loner who likes to shoot first and answer questions never."

"Ah. So, not likely to want to part with the gun."

"Not likely at all."

"Is there a story we could feed him to help the odds? Or, wait, if you know who he is, doesn't that mean he might know who you are? Could we play the Campbell card?"

Mary blinks. By now she's spent more of her life as a Winchester than a Campbell, and she's been networking long enough that she doesn't have to name drop her parents anymore. But with someone like Daniel Elkins . . . "You know, that might just work. Is there a phone number?"

"Yeah, but I think we should wait."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what if, I don't know, the demons find out we talked to him, find out what he has. Or what if they find out we have it before we track down Azazel and mount an offensive or something. I just think we should wait to get the gun until we know we have a way to get to Azazel pretty soon after."

"Smart," John says, coming into the dining room from where he was apparently lurking in the entryway. "If you'd had a mind, you'd have made a good officer, Sammy."

John means it as a compliment, but Sam stares at him in horror. After a moment, John realizes why.

"Aw, fuck, son, I'm sorry. I didn't mean . . . I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, I know you didn't," Sam says, turning back to his notes.

John sits down across from Sam. "Sam, I'm serious. I just meant you're a good strategist, you think things through. That's a neutral ability, something people can use for good or bad, and you've only ever used it for good, OK?"

"Yeah," Sam says, not looking up.

"So long as we're clear." When Sam doesn't respond, John continues: "So, any new leads on how we find the thing? The demon, I mean?"

"There have been a few references to a book that may or may not exist. I've got Bobby and a university professor who thinks I'm working on my PhD both trying to track it down in their own ways, so we'll see whether anything comes of it. My money's on Bobby, but on the other hand, the professor's enthusiastic."

Mary smiles, feeling an odd mixture of pride and sadness: she'd taught him the grad student trick, but she wishes every day she'd never had to. And yet, she doesn't think she can ever bring herself to regret making that deal, because the alternative would be a life without John, a life where Sam and Dean never existed, and that doesn't bear thinking about.

They all make Sam take a break for the holidays, which isn't too hard since his friends are home for winter break and want to see him. Mary hopes that they'll gush about college just enough to remind Sam that his current efforts are a means to an end, but not so much that it sends him on a downward spiral of any sort.

Mary thinks he seems happier, lighter, while his friends are around, but as soon as they all go back to school in January, Sam is, if anything, even more driven than before. But then again, she supposes that makes sense considering the looming deadline.

It turns out Sam was right to bet on both Bobby and the professor: the professor is the first to confirm the existence of the text Sam needs, but Bobby is the one, in March, who is able to acquire it. Having been brought into the inner circle several years ago, Bobby refuses to take any payment for what was probably an expensive and maybe even dangerous black market endeavor. He gruffly insists that knowing the demon is out of the picture will be payment enough, but Mary's pretty sure it has more to do with Bobby's fondness for Sam and his desire for Sam to be OK.

The book has what they need: a spell that will let them summon a specific demon, so long as they know its "name and nature." Some of the ingredients are a little . . . interesting, but between Bobby and Missouri they get them all.

Then it's time to talk to Daniel Elkins. Mary and Sam drive to Colorado to see him in person.

"Demon hunt, huh?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you're really little Mary Campbell?"

"Yes, sir," Mary says, biting back a sharp retort at being called "little" and "Campbell."

"Well . . . OK, then. But understand, you don't bring this back to me, I'll come for you."

"I understand, sir."

Hardly able to believe that it had been that easy, Mary and Sam get back in the car, Sam cradling the box with the gun and bullets. However, once they're safely on the road, Sam turns to Mary and says, "I vote we bring Dad and Dean with us when we return the gun."

"And why is that?" Mary asks with a smile.

"Guy's a dick. Someone should punch him. And I don't know if you've noticed, but your husband and older son are a couple of hotheads, especially when it comes to this family."

"As a matter of fact, I had."

"So?"

"So, it's been way too long since we've had a family vacation."

Sam grins.

There's an abandoned cemetery not too far from town, so they decide to do the spell there: if something goes wrong, they don't want innocent people caught in the crossfire. The plan is that Sam will do the spell, Mary will do the shooting, and John and Dean will be armed with holy water to act as backup.

"Will we be killing a person?" Sam asks abruptly as they go over the plan around the kitchen table. "I mean, the demon's going to be possessing someone. What if they're still alive in there?"

"That's a risk," Mary admits. "There's just no way to know without performing an exorcism, but if we do that we lose the demon. With one that powerful, getting sent back to hell won't be more than a minor setback, easily remedied. We're just going to have to accept that there might be a civilian casualty here. It's not pretty, and it's not nice, but I think, in the balance of things, killing the demon serves the greater good."

"Do we have the right to make that call, though?" Sam asks.

"Sammy, where is this coming from?" John asks. "You've been working your ass off for months to get us here, and now you're balking? It's like your mother said: it ain't pretty and it ain't nice, but it's what we have to do"

Sam gives his head a little shake, as if to clear it. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I just . . . I wish it didn't have to be this way. And if it was only for me I'd put the kibosh on the whole thing. But there are other people like me out there, and if the demon lives, it could end up using one of them to raise its army, and then a lot more people would get hurt. So I'm on board. But after it's over . . . we should try to find out who it is. Give their family closure."

Mary covers his hand with hers. "And that's exactly what we'll do," she promises.

The summoning spell works.

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary," the demon says, eyes smoky yellow, "how does your princeling grow?"

"Ask him yourself," she snarls, raising the Colt.

The demon turns to Sam. "Oh, Sammy, look at you. Finally hit that growth spurt, huh? The things we could do together, if only you'd let me show you."

"Not a chance," he snaps. Mary cocks the gun.

"And what are you going to do with that?" Azazel taunts, but then he takes a closer look. "Oh, you have been a bad girl. It's almost enough to make me wish I could've gotten my instructions sooner, gotten started early enough to recruit you. You're really something, Mary." He turns. "And you, Johnny. No, I suppose it really did have to be this way. I'm just glad I was able to get Mary into the bloodline. But of course, you have no idea what I'm talking about, no idea what really happened to your father."

That gives them all pause, but not for long.

"You're stalling," John says. "Maybe you know something, maybe you don't; either way you die today."

"What did you do to me?" Sam asks.

The demon turns back to him. "Gave you something special, something to make you strong. Kill me and you'll never find out what, never learn to use it."

"That's fine by me," Sam says, and nods to Mary. She pulls the trigger, and the demon drops, infernal lights flashing, flickering, and dying, and all that's left is the body of the man the demon possessed.

After a brief silence, Dean says, "Kinda anti-climactic if you ask me." Mary sees him try to catch his brother's eye, but Sam ignores him and paces solemnly to the body, kneels, and closes the dead man's eyes, head bowed. Mary joins him and puts her hand on his shoulder, and he reaches up to cover it with one of his own.

"We did it," Sam murmurs. "So why does it feel like this?"

Mary thinks back to her first kill. She was only fourteen. Campbell family tradition: every few years, find a big hunt for the whole extended family to go on, let the younger members get blooded with minimal risk thanks to all the backup. For her it was a vampire nest. She'd known they were monsters, known they'd probably killed hundreds of innocent people in their lives, and she'd still thrown up after she took the youngest one's head off. Her dad had clapped her on the back and said she'd get used to it; she'd looked around at the carnage and promised herself that that would never happen.

"It feels like this because taking a life is supposed to be hard, and it shouldn't feel good, no matter how necessary it was. The demon may once upon a time have been an angel, a servant of God, and if not that then, a very very long time ago, it was a person. And this man, who might have still been alive, was innocent in all of this." Sam nods slowly, as John and Dean join them by the corpse, John giving Sam a hand up as he stands, Dean walking around to the other side of the body so he can see his brother's face.

"We did what we had to do," John says, "and it's made the world safer. Try to focus on that, OK, Sam?" Sam nods slowly.

"So what now?" Dean asks, giving up on trying to lighten the mood. "I mean . . . " he gestures to the body.

"Now we put him to rest," Mary says, and they get to work.

Sam is quiet when they get home, and Dean is loud and exuberant to try to make up for it, but Sam just retreats to his room with Harley and Quinn and turns up his music whenever Dean bangs on his door.

They hardly see him for a couple of days, and John and Mary are beginning to talk strategy when he emerges, carrying his laptop and Stanford folder and followed by Harley and Quinn.

"So," he says, plopping down on the couch and turning off the TV before Dean can try to get the remote out of his reach. "Who's up for a trip to California?"

The other three Winchesters exchange glances.

"Stanford," Sam clarifies. "I'd like to visit, talk to my advisor about classes in person, get a feel for where I'll be spending the next four years of my life. And Mom was just saying a couple of weeks ago that it's been too long since we had a family vacation."

"OK, but I'm not going on the kiddie rides with you at Disneyland," Dean says; Sam whacks him in the head with a pillow, knowing Dean won't risk damaging the laptop by retaliating.

"I take it you've got hotel information all pulled up there?" John asks, moving over to sit beside Sam. Sam nods.

Mary smiles as Sam begins to explain the options to John. They are moving forward, finally leaving the nightmares behind. This is what she always dreamed of for herself and her family, and after almost eighteen-and-a-half years, they finally, truly have it: a normal life.

She squeezes onto the couch between her sons, picks up Quinn and sets her in her lap, and joins the discussion of where they should stay when they go on vacation to California.


End file.
